(Closed) Obamacare: How will it affect you personally?

I’m not looking to turn this thread into a nasty, argument-filled thread. I’m not looking to turn this into a political post, exactly. I know there are very strong opinions on this but I want to keep this friendly and somewhat neutral.

The reason I started this thread because I’ve been thinking about my own insurance situation.

I work for a very small company which means a low salary for me but it’s okay for now since I am able to pay my bills and have money left over. I am living within my means.

My company offers insurance but the premiums are too high for me on the group plan. I tried applying for the individual plan but I got turned down because of something in my medical history. I don’t know what though, but I suspect it has to do with me being overweight.

So right now, I don’t have any insurance. I know the Marketplace will open on October 1st, but I wish I could get an idea now of what plans are available and what monthly premiums I could get. Like I would love for my premium to be $100 or less but I don’t know how feasible that is.

Sigh. I’m reserving judgment on Obamacare until I see what plans are available to me in the Marketplace. If they are more expensive than my company’s insurance, I guess I will have to bite the bullet and use my company’s.

So what kind of insurance do you have, if any? How do you think this will affect you?

I have subsidized healthcare through my employer. My premiums have increased $10 a year between 2010 and now.

However, my insurance does wonderful things with that tiny increase. I only had to pay a copay for my IUD, including insertion and removal. When we have a baby, I will get a breastpump as a medical device instead of paying out of pocket. I don’t have to pay for my well-visits to the doctor anymore.

On a different personal note, the Affordable Care Act allows my best friend’s son to live. He is 22 months old and suffers from a severe seizure disorder. Charlie hit his insurance’s lifetime maximum at the ripe age of 10 months. His previous medication cost nearly $200,000 a month. Without the ACA, my best friend and her husband (who are both fully employed, possess masters and doctorates, own a home, etc) would never be able to afford Charlie’s basic medical care. Regardless of the impact on me, as an adult, I know that the ACA will keep him alive and thriving.

I had insurance through my Dad until I was 26 (thanks Obama!) as did my sister (and she really needed it- she gave birth to her first child last year and it would have been a fortune without insurance). Once I turned 26, I found my own insurance plan. I had less than a month without insurance while I was being approved, but I needed to get my birth control without insurance- It was $120!!! I can’t imagine paying $120 EVERY month!! That’s an extra $1440 a year that I don’t have!! I did find insurance- not great insurance- but if something catastrophic happened I wouldn’t have to apply for bankruptcy. With insurance, my birth control ranged between $15 and $30. With ObamaCare, my birth control is FREE. PERIOD. (pun intended- BWAHAHAHA)

As of now, its affected my company a little bit. We have had increases in our copays and other parts of our insurance plans (other than the copay increase, my plan didn’t change much so far). I know that the other plans they offer gave higher premiums this year.

As for Obamacare, I’m curious to see what it exactly will be offering, but I will not be switching. Esp being that members of congress and the IRS have both said they would not want to switch from their current coverage to Obamacare.

The one thing I really wish the govt would bring back is being able to have OTC medications back on FSAs. I really miss that, so annoying!

We just had open enrollment for our insurance and our provider told us that since we’re all young and healthy, our insurance will go way up. About 30% more, and since our employer pays in 70%, that will make help, but not a lot. My husband and I will be paying about $350 a month for the two of us. Employer covers 100% of dental and vision, so that’s a big help when these premiums go up.

It’s a step in the right direction, but it hurts those of us who are young, just starting out in our careers (read: not making a lot of money) and not quite broke enough to get medicaid.

@LadyBlackheart: I have 2 points about Obama care, one affecting me and the other my mom.

For me: I work for a catholic institution and I have high blood pressure, so taking birth control with estrogen in it is a bad idea as it could cause me to have a stroke. When I started my new job at the Catholic institution, my new health insurance wouldn’t cover my low estrogen birth control (not even the generic) so for the generic pills it was going to be $75/month with insurance. I couldn’t afford this. So for now they have me on the regular estrogen pills PLUS a beta blocker for high blood pressure. To me this seems unsafe. I’m hoping when Oct. 1st hits my insurance will cover my low estrogen birth control pills. The institution doesn’t want to cover birth control pills AT ALL, but since I told them I have heavy irregular periods without it they will cover my BC and it went down to $5/month with the generic estrogen pills that could potentially kill me.

For my mom: She lost health insurance when my dad unexpectedly passed away from heart disease. She’s got rheumatoid arthritis and needs to have infusion treatments every 3-4 weeks. She’s been on this treatment regimine for going on 10 years. If she misses a few treatments in a row, that puts her back at square one and she has to start from the beginning. Without insurance, these treatments are around $67k a year. Right now she has COBRA as insurance, but she pays $775 per month just for herself so she doesn’t lapse on the treatments and have to start from scratch. These payments are forcing her to put her house for sale and move into something smaller. It’s really sad.

So I hope Obama care can make my BC affordable and help lower my mom’s monthly premium.

I’m dual insured right now thanks to Obamacare. My job is iffy due to lack of funding, so my mom keeps me on her insurance just in case (I’m 23). I work for a university and we have a very nice healthcare plan, however thanks to Obamacare it’s going to become less nice. Right now the Uplan is considered a cadillac plan by the government, in order to avoid a 40 million dollar fee the university is reducing our benefits and coverage so that our plan falls into a lower bracket. So basically even more of the costs are being shifted to the employees and we’re losing benefits; it’s like getting a double pay cut :/ I think it’s really dumb that a law that is supposed to increase healthcare coverge is reducing mine.

I’m also curious to see what options are available to me. Fiance and I are both 26 and students, my parents have never had insurance (yup,after the age of 19 I stopped having yearly check-ups and only went to the Dr when I had a serious issue) and Fiance just lost his coverage with his family. I work a part-time job, Fiance is not currently working but will be working between 20-30 hr/week which means neither of us is really has very many options.

Before going back to school I did have a full time job which required all employees be insured though a specific company but it was pretty much ridiculous. We only had so many office visits a year, which I blew through in 2 weeks having to go to physical therapy because they counted those as office visits. You were not covered for anytype of “female” exams, no dental, no optical (I have glasses so I need this) and it did not cover children so parents were expected to apply for the state aid if they had kids.

I’m hoping that Obamacare will help people like Fiance and I out who are not lazy or unemployed (I consider being a full-time student a job, which means I work 3 jobs between grad school, my GA, and my part-time). I also want to add that my parents have both worked my entire life, my mother has been a housekeeper at a hotel for 19 years and has to take a lot of medication monthly because of a heart-attack she had almost 2 years ago, as well as going in for regular check-ups. About a year ago she went back to the hospital with chest-pain, come to find out she was having to pick and choose which medication to buy because she could not afford them all which nearly caused her to have another heart attack, thankfully her manager paid for it and told her if she ever needed it again just to ask. My dad is a waiter (he works 6 days a week for 6-7 hours on his feet) and gets periodic flare-ups of shingles but can’t afford the medication that would help deaden his nerves/pain. I feel like my family are the kinds of people that Obamacare has been aimed at helping which is why I’m trying really hard to be optimistic that it will be great, of course that remains to be seen.

I’m watching and waiting like everyone else. I have insurance through my husband and that’s pretty standard, nothing amazing or extraordinary about it. But, insurance on the open market currently (in NY) would be thousands a month. Last year I went to the doctor about 6 times and the bill (without insurance) would have been $5500. I didn’t even do anything major, just some dermatologist appts., eye doctor, teeth cleaning. No hospital visits. That is an insane amount of money!

As of now, there are reports that under Obamacare premiums could be as low as $300/month in NY and the federal government will subsidize that cost (based on income), so it could be under $100 for some folks.

Well my copays and premiums have gone up, but I’m not sure how much of that is due to Obamacare. I am curious to see how it plays out. I know we needed health care reform, I’m just not sure this was teh right way to go about it.